Now all this was quickly done, and yet it had seemed long to Mayli, but still she had let the time pass until the man was pleased again. Then she said, “I daresay you will be going back once more to see the One Above before you go west?”
He looked up from his bowl. “Who told you we go west?” he asked.
“I know,” she said, smiling the least smile she could. “And I want to go, too.”
He put down his bowl. “You!” he cried. “But what would you do?”
“You are taking women with you,” she said, and she leaned her two arms on the table and would not let his eyes escape her.
“Well, only those to care for the wounded,” he said. “We take some doctors and with the doctors are the nurses. It is not we who take them but the doctors.”
“I can care for the wounded,” she said.
But he shook his head. “It is not my affair,” he said. “I will give no such permission. Why, if my men knew, do you think that they would believe why I took you? Would they not see how young you are, and how beautiful? And my wife — do you think she would not scratch out my eyes and pull out my hair? No, we go to win a war.”
She seemed to yield to this, and at least she said nothing. But she sighed and then she said gently: “Perhaps you are right. Well, I will ask another kindness of you. Take me with you to the capital when you go to see the One Above.”
“Whom have you there?” he asked sharply.
“I must do something,” she said humbly. “I came here thinking I would join an army or be of use, but I am no use. If I go to the capital perhaps I can help the Ones Above. I can work in their orphanages, or use my foreign language for them. I know my father would be willing for that.”
Now it happened that this General knew her father very well and the more he thought of what she said, the better it seemed to get this handsome, bold woman near to the Ones Above so that they could guard her. It would be a favor to her father, he told himself.
“That I will do,” he said.
And this was how it came about that she went with him in his own plane. He had planned not to go before the next day at dawn, but when he found she would not go to her home again, he could not think what to do with her, especially now that the young captains made excuses to come in while he ate and tell him one thing and another and always to look at Mayli until his skin burned hot under his collar. What if one of them should tell another and he another, until mouth to ear his decent wife should know of it? And would she believe him when he said the girl was the daughter of a friend and as much forbidden to him as his own daughter? His wife was so jealous by nature that she always believed what she thought instead of what he told her.
So he had put off what he planned to do that day and in less than two hours after he had filled himself with rice, they were in the sky.
Mayli sat behind him, and the little plane dipped and soared and fell into a pocket and came out again, and under them the clouds swelling upward. She felt the sweetest pleasure now in thinking that Sheng did not know where she was, nor would he dream of this. When would she see him, where would they meet and when she saw him what would be their first words again?
She smiled into the heavens, and the General turning at that moment caught the smile. “I feel I am a dragon,” he shouted at her, “a dragon riding on the clouds!”
She laughed and the wind rushing through a hole where the cover was broken, tore the laughter from her lips.
V
NOW THESE ONES ABOVE were no strangers to Mayli. She had heard her father talk much of them. The lady was once her mother’s friend, and the One Above was himself her father’s friend, and the one, moreover, to whom her father looked for direction and command.
Therefore Mayli prepared herself for the meeting, not only in her looks and garments but in what she would say. The meeting was granted easily enough. Mayli sent a message and a message was returned. It was written in English by the lady herself, and it said, “Come and breakfast with us tomorrow.”
So the next morning Mayli, having slept heartily in her hotel after the day’s ride through the sky, put on her favorite gown of apple green and bound back her long black hair in its smooth knot and she added scarlet to her lips and a touch of black to the ends of her eyebrows and she hung plain gold rings in her ears. Then, going out of the hotel, she sat herself in a riksha which was waiting at the door.
“I go to the Chairman’s house,” she said, for the One Above was commonly called the Chairman, and all knew him by that name.
Without any astonishment, the riksha puller said, “The price is half a silver dollar to the ferry,” and when Mayli nodded, he tightened the girdle of cloth about his middle and set off at the smooth running pace to which his brown legs were used.
The streets leading to the river were lines of ruin, and there was scarcely a whole house to be seen anywhere, so heavy had the summer’s bombing been in this city of Chungking, but nobody seemed to see it. Indeed the war had gone on so long that there were now children able to talk and to run about and even to work at small matters to help their parents who had never seen a roof whole over their heads, and who looked on bombings as on thunderstorms and hurricanes, and no more unnatural. On these streets the people went about their business of buying and selling, and in some places houses were even being mended while business went on inside them, and children ran and played and fell under the feet of carriers and riksha runners, so that pleasant curses and laughter and the shouts of people at their everyday life filled the air, even so early. There was liveliness everywhere and no sign of fear or sadness, and Mayli found herself smiling out of simple satisfaction that she was alive too and here and on her way to have breakfast with the Ones Above. And as she liked to do, being so full of life herself, she fell into talk with the person nearest, who was the riksha puller.
“Are you one of those who have come up from under the feet?” the riksha puller asked in politeness.
Now Mayli knew that that this was the manner in which the people of this city asked whether one were a citizen here or not, and so she said, “I come from far away indeed.” He was willing to talk as all his kind are and willingly told her that the times were good for men like him.
“I had rather pull a riksha than be a scholar in these days,” he said laughing. “The truth is that so would scholars. Why, I know a learned man who has papers even from foreign schools, and yet he is pulling a riksha because he earns more so than he did being an official. Yes, in times like this a pair of good legs are worth more than a headful of brains and a bellyful of learning.”
And he went on and told her that his family had escaped without death through two summers of bombings, and that even the smallest child learned last summer to toddle toward the cave in the rocks when the signal went up for the enemy in the skies, and so that his wife would not have to walk so far with the children when he was busy with his trade he had built his hut near the mouth of the cave, and they were very comfortable there.
“Still, it is not a good life,” Mayli said, “and there must come an end to it.”
“There comes an end to all things,” the man said cheerfully, “and our care should be only to be alive when it comes.”
So saying, he drew up before the river, and Mayli paid him his fare, and something more, and then she stepped upon the ferry boat that was waiting for last passengers.
The boat left the shore as soon as she came, for the ferry man was awed by her looks and good garments, and as he rowed across the river, she stood and looked at the scarred city on the shore. It was like a battered brave creature, a dragon who has fought and been wounded and still holds up his head. The light on the muddy river made the water look pearly clear and the city still more dark and scarred.